To paraphrase Harold Macmillan, a “wind of change” is blowing through Africa. But, unlike 1960, when the former British Prime Minister made his famous remark, the wind today is not that of a growing national consciousness in the mud huts and shanty-towns, but instead the stiff breeze of a new kind of Neocolonialism.

Already this year, we have seen significant events in three places: Sudan, Libya, and most recently Ivory Coast, where the country’s President, Laurent Gbagbo was successfully removed from power with the active military participation of France and the United Nations. In these three cases we can see the emerging lineaments of a new modus operandi in Africa, one that secretly recognizes the limitations of African society, and under a false flag of humanitarian concern ruthlessly exploits what the continent has to offer.

In his hilarious, horrifying, and profoundly insightful short book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis assumes the persona of a mid-level administrative demon in Hell instructing his cousin, a guardian Devil on Earth, in the myriad ways to steer his client down the slick and well-trod road to damnation. At one point, the infernal bureaucrat narrator exults at just how cleverly demonic propagandists have trained the foolish humans to be on guard against the very type of wrongdoing that is least likely to happen in a given era’s Zeitgeist:

"The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic… Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants, we make Liberalism the prime bogey."

Currently, a fashionable outcry has arisen in chic circles against the sadly ubiquitous phenomenon known as “bullying.” While many people are, no doubt, sincerely opposed to wanton acts of cruelty and humiliation by the strong and well-placed against the weak and vulnerable, one must nevertheless be aware that taking a political stand against bullying is, at best, a bland, empty gesture, much like opposing drunk-driving, homelessness, child abuse, or pollution; worse, it is quite often a brazenly fraudulent stance, since bullies as such are in reality not the true target of most contemporary “anti-bullying” campaigns. Instead, certain political interest groups have hit upon the idea of characterizing their opponents as ipso facto “bullies,” simply because they have the temerity to oppose what is so obviously right and true (gay marriage, legalized abortion, or some other ideological hobbyhorse), which can only be a result of hateful and repugnant motives, the same kind of mean senior football jock to steal a puny ninth-grader’s lunch money and shove him in his locker.

I have a confession to make. Despite contributing fairly regularly to this much demonized “extreme right-wing” publication, I’m really a rather bland moderate, possessed of unexceptional ideas. In fact, you could best describe me as a bit of a fuddy-duddy; strictly a pipe, slippers, and cocoa sort of guy as far as politics is concerned. If I have a true comfort zone, it is the white line running down the middle of the road that we all happen to be travelling on.

This probably sounds like I’m denying the old tried, tested, and time-worn political categories, and I know there are many who wouldn’t blame me if I ditched this terminology derived from 18th-century French parliamentary seating arrangements, but, no, not this week. For me there still is a Right, a Left, and a Centre; and my favourite locale is the latter, which means I’m very far from the “extreme Right”!